I’m having a debate/ raging argument with a friend about whether or not people get sick from food poisoning more often in Taiwan than in countries like Britain, U.S., etc.
Perhaps I should restrict the debate to us foreigners here in Taiwan. Have you been sick from dodgy food more often than you have back home? Seems like once a year I get something and spend a day off work sitting on the toilet, head over a bucket (and that’s not easy when you’re a penguin). It sucks major league, but in fairness to Taiwan I don’t think I get the trots any more frequently here than I did in U.K. Maybe it’s individual constitution.
What does bug me (pun intended) though is blatantly sloppy hygiene practices or complete lack thereof that you see. If some people involved in food preparation could just have the slightest of clues about how to avoid giving someone the shits I’d be a happy man indeed.
My most recent episode of Taiwan Tummy was traced to some street vendor clams (I know I know - stooooopid). I went back afterwards and mentioned (in a very non-confrontational way you understand!) that I thought perhaps their clams had given me the runs. Actually I was pissed off as I had felt really ill for a day and half, lost pay as a result.
The woman just laughed nervously and said, “Oh that’s probably my daughter. She probably did not put enough ice on the clams.” :shock:
That was it! That was her explanation, no apology, or ‘here have some noodles on the house’. I don’t know what I expected, but I really wanted to stuff a few of those clams down her stupid, heavily pregnant 17-year-old daughter’s throat and see how she liked it. OK - that’s the end of my rant. Thanks for listening.
Ha ha ha. That was actually kind of funny. (Not laughing at your misfortune, of course). Yeah, I think that seafood that is not properly cooled is a big culprit, so is the industrial grade oil they use at most food stalls.
That said, the runs/pukes disappear after a couple years (at least in my case). Now I get constipated whenever I go back to the West (not enough industrial-grade lube in my stomache???).
And if you want to compare to China (Beijing)… I ate completely innocuous (sp?) looking food for a whole year and puked my guts out 4 times! I even got hooked up to an IV once (by a foreign doctor, no less). That’s four times in 1 year, compared to 2 times in seven years here. Go figyah.
The first few weeks I was here, I though it was my tummy adjusting to the food here in TW, but then later I found out that a few times it was food poisoning. I mean, when you started to puke A LOT and have ppl warning you about stinking up the bathroom, you know it is something else…
Had food poison twice in the US all because of those microwave hamburger and no more those shitty, fake, yucky burgers for me. But there should be more food poison cases here in TW than in the US, look @ how dirty those food stands are!! Well, I am still here, typing away stupid messages so I guess it isn’t that bad after all…
I got sick as a dog from squid-on-a-stick once, hence my rabid distaste for it. Also, the eggs used to give me the runs. Not recently, so maybe I’ve got an iron gullet now, like scooter.
I hardly ever, no I NEVER, eat Taiwanes food from street stalls not because it’s frighteningly unsanitary, but because it’s gross, oily, and artery-clogging.
I’ve heard the reason liver cancer is a major killer here is due to the fact that so many people in the society pick up Hepatitis that goes undetected and untreated and breaks down their systems in the successive years.
When initially moving to Asia I had a few issues with my digestive system (i.e. diarrhoea) from time to time for a day or two at most but got used to the food after a few months, even extensive travelling around the region didn’t harm me after that - never had a real food poisoning actually.
All that was to change when I came to Taiwan for the first time (3 weeks business trip) - a local took me out for dinner and we had some omelette with clams or oysters.
The next day I spend in the hotel suffering and emptying my stomach both ways … worst time being ill that I remember. Still didn’t feel well on the 2nd day but there was nothing left in my body to come out so I flew back (scheduled departure anyhow). Took a rest at home and recovered during the weekend.
Returned a few months later and have been in Taiwan nearly 2 years now but besides some minor ‘inconveniences’ once in a while I am doing ok though I am cautious where and what I eat. Needless to say I never will touch ‘that stuff’ again.
hmmm… good point, although i am consistently nauseated by the filthy food preparation and lack of basic hygiene in 99% of taiwan’s food stalls and restaraunts… i haven’t gotten food poisoning once in over 4 years of eating roadside stall food…
but there is a buffet style restaraunt near my house that is directly accross the road from a hospital… there’s no glass or anything between you and the food, so every day hundreds of disease permeated patients and nurses etc. all pore over the buffet whilst talking (read: shouting) to each other, coughing, sniffing and dispersing their germs over the food with gleeful ignorance… it’s this kind of third-world backwater half-witted ignorance of normal civilized hygiene practices and standards that irks me the most… :?
EDIT: it just occured to me that my run of luck with food poisoning could well re related to the fact that i don’t eat seafood…
yeah… I’m saved by the “seafood factor” too. I eat at food stalls now and then and never had a problem.
I DID have a problem with “three cups chicken” (san bei ji) once in a restaurant between Ilan and Hualien. The strange thing is that it didn’t affect my ABC friends. I know it was food poisoning though, because it hit me within about 20 minutes (from both ends). The other culprit was a cheese and lettuce sandwich I got near Taida. I’m assuming the lettuce wasn’t washed??
I just finished translating a thesis about the health problems related to Taiwanese snack foods. The stuff I read will certainly make me think 2X about ever eating them again. For example:
Many Taiwanese stalls use industrial grade oil, which most countries use to make soap
Few places wash their fruits and veggies properly. In order to meet standards they should first scrub the target veggie/fruit with water, then let it sit in a completely different basin of water for a period of time.
Dish-washing techniques are downright vile. (Ever seen someone crouched by the roadside, dumping dishes in a basin filled with laundry detergent + water? The dishes are often cleaned with cold water, sometimes they aren’t scrubbed, and often they are wiped dry with a dirty rag.)
The disposable dishes/utensils used by many stalls and restaurants don’t meet standards. Ever get soup or doujiang in a plastic bag? Many of those bags should never be heated to over 60 degrees C. Hot foods are almost always hotter than this. Chopsticks are another scary subject that would take much longer to get into.
While the stuff I read certainly made me cautious, I will say that for the most part, these health concerns won’t usually give you food poisoning and in low quantities I’m sure it is fine. But you wonder if this is what contributes to so-called “civilized diseases/illnesses” like cancer, which are on the rise in advanced countries (where people certainly can afford to eat healthy, nutritious foods if they wanted to…)
[quote=“scooter”]yeah… I’m saved by the “seafood factor” too. I eat at food stalls now and then and never had a problem.
I did have a problem with “three cups chicken” (san bei ji) once in a restaurant between Ilan (Yilan) and Hualien (Hualian). The strange thing is that it didn’t affect my ABC friends. I know it was food poisoning though, because it hit me within about 20 minutes (from both ends). The other culprit was a cheese and lettuce sandwich I got near Tai-Da. I’m assuming the lettuce wasn’t washed??
I just finished translating a thesis about the health problems related to Taiwanese snack foods. The stuff I read will certainly make me think 2X about ever eating them again. For example:
Many Taiwanese stalls use industrial grade oil, which most countries use to make soap
Few places wash their fruits and veggies properly. In order to meet standards they should first scrub the target veggie/fruit with water, then let it sit in a completely different basin of water for a period of time.
Dish-washing techniques are downright vile. (Ever seen someone crouched by the roadside, dumping dishes in a basin filled with laundry detergent + water? The dishes are often cleaned with cold water, sometimes they aren’t scrubbed, and often they are wiped dry with a dirty rag.)
The disposable dishes/utensils used by many stalls and restaurants don’t meet standards. Ever get soup or doujiang in a plastic bag? Many of those bags should never be heated to over 60 degrees C. Hot foods are almost always hotter than this. Chopsticks are another scary subject that would take much longer to get into.
While the stuff I read certainly made me cautious, I will say that for the most part, these health concerns won’t usually give you food poisoning and in low quantities I’m sure it is fine. But you wonder if this is what contributes to so-called “civilized diseases/illnesses” like cancer, which are on the rise in advanced countries (where people certainly can afford to eat healthy, nutritious foods if they wanted to…)[/quote]
Scooter, this thesis sounds like it will have very practical applications. Is the author going to publish the results online? Can you provide some more details about the study (was it in Taipei? did it focus ona particular market? how many stalls were examined? etc).
While living in Taiwan, I probably got food poisoning once a year. I don’t think that’s too often considering that I always ate out. Now that I am married and my eating habits resemble a civilised human being, I haven’t gotten food poisoning at all.
Do Taiwanese food stalls still serve everything with paper plates and throw away chopsticks? That really bothered me when I was there since I thought it was so wasteful. However, I wouldn’t trust most stalls to properly wash their plates, etc.
In Hong Kong, pretty much all of the food stalls use regular plates and chopsticks. They are usually clean, but I wouldn’t want to eat at them if it weren’t for being able to rinse everything myself. In all but the nicest HK restaurants, they will give everybody a cup or pot of tea. The tea isn’t intended for drinking. You’re supposed to use it to rinse your bowl, etc. They usually do it across the border, too. This still doesn’t eliminate the possibility that the water may not be hot enough or that the dishes on which the food is served may not be clean. Has anybody ever seen this done in Taiwan? I never saw it.
I find that I have to be a lot more careful in Guangdong than I was in HK or Taiwan. I eat out for most meals, but only go to 5 or 6 restaurants. Most places scare the hell out of me. I never eat at food stalls here. Mainlanders always tell me that I am missing out by not eating xiaochi. They always say: “so you’ve never eaten at a food stall?” My response is “yes, dumbass, I have, but that would have been in HK or Taiwan, where they have some clue about hygiene.”
I’ve heard quite a few people here say that their guts have gotten used to the local bacteria, so they don’t get sick anymore. I asked a doctor about this in Taiwan. He said that concerning full blown food poisoning, this is not true. He said that any bacteria that can put a foreigner down for a day or two can do the same to a Taiwanese, and that there are way too many kinds of bacteria out there for you to have much resistance to many of them. He said that foreigners who live in Taiwan or other developing countries for a long time generally avoid getting sick by slowly adjusting their habits. It isn’t so much your body that is adapting, but your habits. I think that makes a lot of sense. Some of this is unconscious. Now that I think about it, I smartened up a lot about what and where I ate during the time I lived in Taiwan.
For some mad reason I simply never throw up, not even of the odd occasion when I’ve gotten completely trashed on alcohol - well not since I was in my teens that is. I get the squirts quite regularly but nothing too serious. Like someone else said I tend to have to work on unbunging if I’m in a western country for any extended time. I blame the bread.
I eat it all, slop shop, street, anywhere, any country, including India. Never got a serious dose of anything except carcinogens and hardening arteries. Pei pei pei.
I’ve only ever gotten food poisoning at a McDonald’s. Never from a food stall. Maybe I’m just lucky. Or maybe, HGC, we are at the leading edge of human evolution. Perhaps some day all humans will have digestive systems able to handle eating some lukewarm dumplings served up by a stall owner who’s too busy to wipe his or her hands after taking a dump.
[quote=“Bu Lai En”]I eat snacks in nightmarkets a lot and I’ve never got sick from it. Probably because I’m vegetarian. So eat veggo and you’ll be sweet.
Brian[/quote]
I would generally agree that vegetarians don’t get food poisoning as often as meat eaters. However, the worst case of food poisoning I ever got was when I was a vegetarian. I was living in England and got a take away from a vegetarian India place. That was the sickest I had ever been in my life. I had a fever that peaked everyday at 104 F for over a week. Without an IV, I probably would have dried up completely. I couldn’t keep anything in me. How do I know I picked it up at the Indian place? The lab test said that the bacteria I had in me is mostly found in south Asia. The doctor said that other people had picked up the same bug from the same takeaway and that it was one of the few times they had seen it in the UK. Only two anti-biotics can treat it; most people who get it in the 3rd world die.
Not sure if she’s going to publish on line, but I will certainly ask. Haven’t reached the part where she discusses research methodology… might be more anecdotal than quantitative. So far she has quoted other researchers from hospitals and universities… they may have the facts you are looking for. I’ll do some delving and get back to you on that.
I got my first food poisoning from Gongbao jiding in Beijing. The problem was, that I didn’t get sick enough, but instead stayed home half dead half alive for about a week. My friend who had the same dish at the same restaurant the same day, but a few hours later, was so sick, that he had to go to the hospital in the middle of the night, but was fine the next day again… :shock:
Having lived in Mainland for a year, the last 6 month, I had la duzi at least once a week and ever since, I have a very sensitive stomach and so do a lot of my classmates who have spent a year in Mainland.
In Taiwan, the only food poisoning I ever had was from the famous and expensive Italian restaurant behind the Sun Yat-sen Memorial. What’s it’s name again? Capone’s, right? After a nice dinner stayed home for 3 days, just lying in bed or running to the bathroom…it was New Years ever!!!
Never got sick from any of the street stalls though, but this might be, because I do not eat meat anymore since the Gongbao jiding incident 7 years ago…
Many Taiwanese stalls use industrial grade oil, which most countries use to make soap